Mary Wollstonecraft statue

There is now a crowd funder for the Martin Jennings statue to be created and placed in another location.

www.crowdfunder.co.uk/statue-for-mary-wollstonecraft?fbclid=IwAR2plQicb0wg14NMbtAI5RVYfLQ4FZ4zKIw8Nd16E7AAULcZMEyDUfMzHtE

It seems to me the statue has an androgynous head with an idealised female form. The last thing MW would have wanted IMO was a sexualised statute representing her. It detracts from everything she believed in.

The convention is to dress awesome people in togas and the classic symbolism would have done just fine for her.

Birmingham’s Bull regularly gets dressed for special occasions.
Re MW statue, I have to agree with the comment ‘Barbie on a kebab’. Disappointing, an opportunity missed.

Thanks for that farnorth.

As well as all the problems with the statue and its nakedness, on which I posted earlier. The more I look at this sculpture, the more I think it is just a poor piece of art. The base is too heavy and bulky and the statue on the top is actually disproportionately small. Its the sort of work, at table top height you see in local amateur art exhibitions ore produced by less gifted A level Art students.

M0nica I absolutely agree.
It is very poorly executed.
The hair is awful; the boobs are awful; the face is awful.
It doesn't have a single redeeming feature.
MH has clearly lost it.

Leaving aside its relevance, or not, to Mary Wollstonecraft and looking at it as the 'Everywoman emerging from a mass of females' idea that it's apparently meant to be - I still think it's rubbish, both in the idea of everywoman being naked and in the way it's been done.

I quite like Maggi Hambling and I really love "The Scallop! on Aldeburgh beach but this one - no. The image of a small head of broccoli in the pubic region (some journalist used that likeness) will not allow me to take the whole thing seriously even if I wanted to, which I don't.

Forget the reason for the artwork, a very laudable ambition, the artwork itself is atrocious, and the ‘Barbie’ doll attached to the top does absolutely nothing for the sculpture or for Mary Wollstonecraft or her beliefs and ideals. Take a look at the statue in Kensington Gardens of Peter Pan, which must be on a similar scale. It is beautiful, simple, elegant, yet saying everything...... By the way , I think Maggie Hambling’s Shell sculpture in Aldeburgh is very beautiful.

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202011/medium-534521-hambling.jpg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202011/medium-859680-hambling-2.jpg

Well, I finally went to see it in the flesh today - my sister lives nearby.

I have to say despite myself I rather like it - the lower part seems to be an amalgam of female shapes and it's interesting to see it from all angles, walking around.

I still don't quite 'get' the tiny figure of a woman, but if you can enlarge the photo you'll see it's quite, despite the pert breasts, androgynous - sort of Germanic and echoes of Leni Riefenstahl.

As Victoria Coren Mitchell said on HIGNFY at least it gives girls a chance to see that women used to have pubic hair.

Yes Deedaa,that raised a smile from me

Unfortunately, the pudendum looks masculine.

Riverwalk you haven't actually said what you like about it.
And do you think it is a good memorial to, or for, Mary Wollstonecraft?

I think her pubic hair resembles a cabbage

Bathshe

I think her pubic hair resembles a cabbage

I thought it was more like broccoli.

I can’t see what’s so masculine about the statue’s pubic hair, Riverwalk, but I haven’t made a study of the subject.

Looks like Maggie is either losing her touch or getting lazy as it looks to me just like a Rodin statue.
The figure would work better for MW with a classical robe (as mentioned before) or diaphanous drapes. The statue with books is more to the point, if conventional.
Deedaa, many women young and old, still have their pubic hair (me included), so no need for the past tense.

Looking at Riverwalk's photograph - the entire little figure looks masculine.

grumpa - the pudendum, not the hair. If you look at the shape in RW's photo you will see that the form looks more like male genitalia

It's just ugly; if ever a statue needs to be toppled this one has to be it.
Could she not have made a statue that looked noble?
I'm particularly disappointed as a woman is the artist, it seems we can't have a female statue that doesn't sexualize the subject.

It looks like those cheap souvenirs you see on tat tourist stalls in tourist honey pot cities. perhaps she was hoping that is what it would become.